Career Crossroads (Part 1)- Landing the First Job

If you are like me, you would have experienced several occasions in the course of your career when you feel uncertain, confused or “stuck”.?

Some people call these career crossroads.? After we have successfully crossed one, another will come in due time.

In fact, I now believe a successful career is one which we continuously prepare to overcome the many crossroads that come our way.

I am sharing my career crossroads in a few articles to highlight the challenges I have been through and considerations I have taken to decide on the path ahead.

Not everyone is well thought through. Some can even be hilarious. So please bear with me.

This is the first article in the series.

My first crossroad

When I was in university, career counselling was never heard of.? However, there were recruitment sessions – where companies ran campaigns in campus to recruit graduating students.? These companies were usually large multinationals or local firms with good employer brands that many graduates dreamt of working for.

As I did not know what I wanted to do then, I attended some recruitment talks and sent my resume to as many companies as I could spell their names.

And I was lucky! After going through many rounds of interviews, I was offered 3 jobs by 3 top global companies!

The first one was with a top consumer goods company for the job of a brand executive.? The second was a trainee night forex trader with a global bank. The third was a management associate with IBM.

After receiving many “high fives” from my friends, I had to make a critical decision to select one out of the three.

As there was no career counsellor I could turn to for advice then, I decided to consult a group that would give me the best career advice at that time – my drinking buddies!

After our third mug of beer in a pub one night, someone in the group suggested that I use a tried and tested formula to evaluate my career options – the mother-in-law rule!? How it works is to ask myself the question – “What will your future mother-in-law say when you tell her you are working as an XXX in YYY”.

Following his brilliant advice, I decided to try it out.

For the consumer goods company, I would tell my future mother-in-law “Hmm…. I sell diapers….and oh yes, sanitary pads too!”? Despite how important these products are for human survival, it didn’t sound like she would want her daughter to marry me.

So I took it out from my list.

For the bank, my future mother-in-law would probably like a banker for her future son-in-law. So that was a tick.? However, I could not fancy myself working at night while my friends were partying.? So I rejected that too.

What was left then was the management associate position with IBM.? Since I did not know what I wanted to do then, the role seemed like a good fit as it promised to provide a six-month training after which the company would assign us a role that best fit us.? So it was a perfect deal. Never mind my poor results in the “Management Information Systems” course at that time.

Little did I know that the very decision at the beginning of my career would have me spend the bulk of my working life in the technology sector!

In my next article, I will share another crossroad during my mid-career transition. Look forward to hearing yours too!

P/S : For a glimpse of the Nextplay philosophy and framework, please read my previous article here ?